Highlighting the obtuse, the slanted and sometimes just plain ignorant writings found in The Gray Lady

Hillary Clinton

On April 12th 2017 they promoted a “controversial” story about the “Fearless Girl” statue on Wall Street and how it turned the sculptor of the Wall Street bull rather peevish.

It turned out to generate massive coverage and feedback from people all over the world.

Great, you might say?

Not so great, we say.

Why?

Because the “Fearless Girl” statue was commissioned by State Street Capitol Advisors – Who The New York Times took Big $ from for a Big Ad in their same day’s Business Section which just so happened to blare – get this – “Sometimes Shit Happens.”

Well, actually, the ad said – “Sometimes —– Happens.”

But why be coy when you’re in bed with The New York Times and promoting yourself by ludicrously tying your corporate profits onto the back of the Women’s Rights Movement?

Talk about shame.

Shame on The New York Times.

Shame on State Street Capitol Advisors.

Shame on all those who got suckered into this false “discussion” of “Fearless Girl” when the real issue is about two corporations making a tempest in a teapot in order to generate corporate profits.

1. ESPN is owned by The Walt Disney Company, a corporation that rakes in $52 Billion dollars every year and is only interested in making many more billions of dollars.

2. ESPN makes a habit of promoting the most powerful sports’ interests.

The latest example would be their blatant Duke/Louisville basketball commercials where they make a hero out of Duke’s creepy, cheating Grayson Allen. Does it matter to ESPN that Allen has been repeatedly kicking hitting opponents and is despised by most Americans who value sportsmanship?

No. ESPN wants to make this creep a hero.

3. The number one mantra of every good American should be: “Question Authority.” ESPN will never question authority because they are invested in the status quo.

See a bad call on the football field or on the ball court? ESPN announcers rarely question referees’ or officials’ calls. Questioning authority upsets the status quo. Even though all of America sees what is unfair, ESPN people are blind.

4. ESPN lies by omission.

Before Alabama woefully lost to Clemson in the national championship game, ESPN already crowned Alabama the champ, reporting countless stories and video feeds promoting the invulnerability of the Alabama football team.

Whoops!

Then after Clemson kicked Alabama’s butt in the championship game ESPN practically ignored the results and ignored Clemson’s victory.

Why?

Because ESPN owns the SEC Network where Alabama plays. It is in ESPN’s financial interest to promote Alabama.

Clemson? ESPN won’t make money off Clemson. So they ignore them.

Everyone’s up on fake news. How about “fake non-news?”

5. These “Takeaway” things are just plain silly so make up your own for this last one…

PS: Dan Dakich and Kirk Herbstreit are the 2 exceptions at ESPN: They are both very good at what they do.

Everyone declared Alabama the National Champion of College Football before the game was even played Monday night.

Someone forgot to tell Clemson. They kicked Alabama’s butt 35-31 and left all the football pundits looking like the political geniuses who had Hillary Clinton as president.

It’s always sweet when the nation knows what’s going to happen while the national media does nothing but scream the opposite.

All season long the pundits have piled on about Alabama being the best football team. Yet Americans who watch the game knew that was far from true.

The laughable ESPN has for weeks planted headline-worthy stories crowning Alabama as champions; How many Americans know ESPN runs the SEC Network that ‘Bama represents? It is in ESPN’s financial interest to push ‘Bama as national champion, and that was what they did with all their sloppy journalistic might.

The New York Times had innumerable articles fronting ‘Bama as the leading team of America.

It must be remembered that Hollywood is a world unto itself – a hubbub of a bubble; the ultimate echo chamber.

And this year the cries bouncing off that bubble and echoing around in that chamber is that Damien Chazelle’s “La La Land” is the musical masterpiece of the year.

We beg to differ.

After a recent viewing of “La La Land” with an average audience – not an “industry” audience, mind you – the crowd upon exiting was left muttering “what were all those critics talking about?”

What we saw was a mumbling, disjointed mish-mash with not one memorable song or performance. Ryan Gosling did his best with the material he was given but playing against Emma Stone he might as well have been hitting tennis balls against a brick wall. Stone’s acting goes from A to Z with nothing in between. No shading. We get the tearing, blurting bits that we saw so well in, well, “Birdman,” for example. And she keeps throwing that back at us.

As musicals go, this one didn’t. Go.

From the opening sequence, once the actors open their mouths to sing the words got lost and we knew we were in the hands of a second-rate director. The composition within the frame was crowded and without perspective, not unlike a smartphone user who’s never sure where the action is so they just point where the movement goes. Cinematography is an art. A cinematographer has a grand vision that encompasses light, composition, movement, depth, color all in a complex language that conveys a dramatic purpose to a film.

In “La La Land” the cinematography was non-existent.

And don’t give any credence to those critics who cite the beauty of the “shots” such as Griffith Park. A camera held still and rolling “film” on an object is not cinematography.

Most of the scenes in “La La Land” were so underlit that Stone and Gosling’s faces were in shadow. And when they are supposed to be singing, audiences want to SEE the mouths of the actors.

Dramatic tension. As in Chazelle’s “Whiplash” this film has a tacked-on, fake dramatic turning point that comes out of nowhere and appears in one scene at a dining table. Coming from left field, audiences are blind-sided. “Well, guess we’re going in that direction.”

Chazelle is still an immature filmmaker. Here he’s not unlike a trolley car driver who’s got his passengers on a trip then decides to jump the track. Passengers – except for gullible Hollywood-ites – don’t enjoy bumpy rides.

The most egregious example of a director who is clueless over what to do with a musical bit is Stone’s little audition song toward the end. It’s meant to be powerful yet, Chazelle has Stone frozen in place, not moving a muscle, under a hard spot, for the entire song. We’ve never seen someone sing a song as if they were standing in front of a firing squad, but this bit would surely qualify.

The film’s ending is an example of what happens when you give a director final cut. They always find a way to make it longer and confusing and waste any goodwill they might have garnered from the audience up until that point.

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There’s more. Much, much more.

And we’ll write about that when we find the time.

At this point we’ll remind everyone to rush out and see Hollywood’s fav flick from last year – “The Revenant.”

Oh, you don’t want to waste your time on that boring slogfest, either.

When the US Ambassador to the UN’s car callously murders a small boy on a trip to Africa you’d think it would be news.

For New York Times writers it’s just an excuse to glorify their own life stories, not unlike callous teenagers who, when faced with monstrous world events, turn obsessively to ruminate on how everything effects them.

NYT’s writer Helene Cooper in today’s Times uses the pronoun “I” so many times in an article about an African boy’s murder by UN Ambassador Samantha Powers motorcade that you’d think she was the one that was hit, bounced in the air and then ignored by Americans on a supposed “mercy” trip to Africa.

“I, I, I, I, I, I” and on, and on, and on.

Writer Cooper supposedly uses the first person to express outrage at the boy’s murder.

But in the end, the article is nothing more than the glorification of the writer, elevating herself above the story, elevating her “feelings” of outrage, turning journalism into nothing more than a Facebook post by an over-emotional adolescent teenager.

Making the story not about the horrific death of a 6 year old African boy, but instead all about the feelings of a privileged New York Times writer.

After the New York Times disastrous miscalculation on the 2016 election of Donald Trump, they have gone though a much ballyhooed reformation in order to present the world’s affairs to its readers in a – well, some kinda different format.

A very ugly example of this new format has been its coverage of the recent deaths of Pop star George Michael and Film star Debbie Reynolds.

NYT’s writer Wesley Morris threw out extended stories on Michael and Reynolds lives under the creepy title “An Appraisal.”

“An Appraisal?”

Those of us in the civilized world understand “An Appreciation” of someone’s life after they have passed on. But, an “appraisal?”

Appraisals are something you do to a used car. An appraisal is something you do to a piece of property.

After an artist has just died, you do NOT offer up an appraisal.

Unless, of course, you are a crass, wallowing-in-a-moral-morass NYT’s writer.

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Need an example of some “appraisals” from NYT’s writer Morris? How about:

“Who the hell is gonna be named Debbie?” on Ms. Reynolds.

Or calling Ms. Reynolds “a casually narcissistic gorgon of a mother.”

Or his vicious hits on George Michael, just a day after his death, ridiculing his “butch” style or making left-handed cuts about his homosexuality.

Incredulously, this quat writer Morris puts this stuff out in a – yes – casually narcissistic manner meant to be chatty and endearing.

If this dude were ever speaking at a wake, we’re sure he’d end up buried before the person in the casket.

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How about this: Since we can’t trust The New York Times to properly appraise our current political or world situations, why the HELL do they think they can appraise the lives of artists who have done much to add joy to this world?

And for all those commenting on sports sites across the web the troubling conclusion is this: The girl deserved it.

Why? Because prior to getting violently punched out by a massive, muscular athlete, the blond girl pushed him, then slapped him on the neck.

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By the thousands men (and some women) are throwing their weight behind the very flimsy logic that this big man was merely defending himself against this girl.

Tellingly, by the thousands these nitwits are buttressing their logic with the fact that women declare they want equality from men. Therefore, a push and a slap from a much smaller female should certainly be seen as a mortal threat and should be countermanded by a punch with the force to kill.

“They want equality? We’ll GIVE them equality! With our fists!” they all say.

Hmmm….think these people have issues?

Think these people can’t properly process intellectual concepts?

Think these people hate all that “women’s lib” stuff? Think these are all the people who hated Hillary Clinton because she was one of “those” women and really wanted to punch her out?

Think this nation is becoming more violent, more intolerant, more reactionary, less able to grasp fundamental values like, for example, Don’t beat your children or women?

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It’s popular to talk about the crumbling infrastructure of America – meaning roads, bridges, etc.

There’s another infrastructure crumbling in America and the sound is deafening – It’s the sound of the crumbling infrastructure of American Society.

We’re wondering who’s going to stand up and become the leader to rebuild that.